


A Well-Deserved Rest

by aewgliriel



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 22:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16690042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aewgliriel/pseuds/aewgliriel
Summary: After the escape from Scarif, Jyn tends to Cassian as best she can. Birthday fic for vaderkat on Tumblr. Thanks to Starbird for the beta!





	A Well-Deserved Rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VaderCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaderCat/gifts).



She’s no stranger to exhaustion. From the age of eight, Jyn has been on the edge of perpetual exhaustion. Living with Saw’s Partisans, running on her own from the Empire, the literal sleepless nights in Wobani, only snatching naps during the times her cellmate was out or deeply asleep.

None of that compares to how she feels now, lying on the floor of a stolen Imperial shuttle, with her leg and shoulder aching, knowing they transmitted the plans, but wondering vaguely what the cost was. Not that it matters in the moment. All that matters right now is the warm, shaking body lying beside her on the floor.

Jyn curls herself closer around Cassian, as if the more physical contact she can manage, the more she can ease his pain. She wonders how he’s still conscious, how he managed to reach her after that horrific fall. He got into the shuttle under his own power, mostly, but he collapsed as soon as they reached the ship’s interior and hasn’t been able to move.

“Jyn,” he rasps. “Am I dying?”

“Not if I can help it,” she whispers harshly. “No. We’ll get you help.”

“Could have left me.”

She shakes her head, realises he can’t see that with her head tucked into his uninjured shoulder, growls, “No.”

Cassian finally opens his eyes as she sits up a little to check on his blaster burn. “I cannot believe we made it.”

She glances towards where Baze holds a too-still Chirrut, though she can see the blind man is still breathing, just unconscious. “Most of us. I’m sorry about Kaytoo.”

He doesn’t respond, just closes his eyes again. His breathing, already laboured, turns a little ragged. Jyn feels helpless; there’s nothing to give him. She already checked and the “medkit” of this kriffing shuttle only has stims and a few bandages. No bacta, no pain medications. She and Baze used the bandages on Cassian and Chirrut but the stim was only useful to Bodhi, who got knocked out for a while when the shuttle they arrived in was blown up. Tonc, up in the copilot seat, dragged the Jedhan pilot to safety and to a new ship.

The six of them are all that’s left. So many dead. She hopes this was worth it.

Cassian groans a little, the first real pained sound he’s let himself make. Jyn worries that there’s internal bleeding, but when she gently probes, his stomach feels okay. He winces and hisses something in a language she doesn’t understand.

“Sorry,” she murmurs. “I need to look at your ribs.”

His dark eyes slit open. “Why? You can’t do anything about them.”

He has a point. She sighs. “So I can have Bodhi comm ahead and tell them what injuries we need treated?”

He coughs. There’s no blood on his lips, though he winces sharply and takes fast, shallow breaths. “Stang,” he mutters. “That one is definitely broken.”

Jyn chews at her bottom lip for a moment. She’s not used to this feeling of needing to make his pain stop, to take care of him. Everything about this is new to her, and she doesn’t know how to deal with it.

“Has Bodhi made contact yet?” Cassian asks.

“Let me check.”

Reluctantly, with no little discomfort and struggle of her own, Jyn drags herself to her feet and limps the short distance to the cockpit. Bodhi’s got dried blood down the side of his face from a cut on his forehead. The area there is swollen and bruised. Tonc is keeping an eye on him, though the soldier has a tourniquet wrapped tightly just below his elbow, stemming the blood flow from a ruined hand. How, she wonders, did he get Bodhi and steal a ship in that condition?

“Do they know we’re coming?” she asks.

Bodhi spares her a glance. “I’ve sent messages. No response yet, but it’s only been a few minutes. They’re probably all busy running from the battle now.”

Jyn leans against the back of his seat and barely holds in a scoff. She knows why they’d run. Once they received the plans, there would be no reason to stay and get slaughtered. The plans are more important than anything else.

The comms crackle and a voice comes through. “Rogue One, this is _Ghost_. We received your message.”

“ _Ghost_?” Bodhi asks.

From the floor behind them, Cassian says, “General… Syndulla. And maybe… other friends.”

“Comm them back,” Jyn says briskly. “Tell then we have Captain Andor and other injured.”

“R-right.”

Jyn lets Bodhi handle it, worried about the way Cassian sounds now. She lowers herself to the floor beside him, pressing the length of her body to his again, and runs her fingers through his hair. “We’ll get help soon,” she tells him.

“You’re hurt,” he observes.

“It’s nothing,” Jyn tries to assure him. “I’m just worried about you.”

Cassian sighs softly as she combs her fingers through his dark locks, presently caked with sweat, a bit of dried blood, and copious amounts of sand. She becomes aware that her hands are shaking with fatigue, and rests one under her head, the other on his chest. No matter his breathing from injured lungs, his heart beats steadily under her hand.

Bodhi calls back that they’re rerouting to a nearby planet to meet up with General Syndulla’s ship. But it’s three hours away; they can’t risk any closer.

Jyn meets Baze’s eyes again. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.

——-

She jolts awake when they drop out of hyperspace, feeling no better for the nap she hadn’t planned on taking. Cassian is also asleep, or maybe unconscious. She gently prods him and he groans and opens one eye. Not unconscious, then. Good.

They don’t even bother to land; Bodhi and the pilot of the other ship simply dock the two together via their emergency hatches and a flexible gangway tunnel. A young woman with blue and purple hair and tawny skin appears, accompanied by a tall, broad-shouldered and bearded blonde man.

It’s the man that sees Cassian on the floor and says, “Fine mess you made, Andor. Why am I not surprised to be picking up after you?”

Cassian replies, “Kriff you, Kallus”, but there’s no heat in it.

Kallus, whoever he is, has a crisp Coruscant accent, but he doesn’t _look_ Imperial to Jyn. Of course, Draven’s got a similar accent, and so does she, herself. The big man helps her get Cassian to his feet, guides them across to the other ship. Then he goes back for Baze and Chirrut.

She wonders what they’re going to do with the shuttle, then decides she doesn’t really care. She wants bacta, pain meds, and the strongest cup of caf available. She’s not sleeping until she knows Cassian is alright.

The other ship, it turns out, is captained by a tall, lithe, green-skinned Twi’lek female. The other woman eyes her and says, “You must be Erso. We’re putting you lot in the crew cabin. I’m afraid we don’t have much, but the medical frigate isn’t far.”

Jyn nods. She goes into the cabin where Kallus settled Cassian, and she sits down on the bunk beside him. He reaches out a hand, and without a word, she lies beside him. A bit of tension goes out of him, and she lies with him there through Kallus and Syndulla and the purple-haired woman getting the others into the bunks. Baze and Chirrut are in the captain’s cabin, Bodhi tells her as he climbs up to the top of the bunks above her and Cassian. Chirrut is still unconscious.

Jyn lies beside Cassian and tries not to dwell.

——-

Their ship meets up with the _Redemption_ , the Alliance’s main medical frigate, near the edge of Hutt Space. As they exit the small freighter, Jyn realises that she’s the least injured of them all: no broken bones, no severe burns or lacerations, just a few soft tissue injuries. They don’t let her go with Cassian, and she’s not surprised. She wants to protest, but has no energy for it.

Instead, she’s herded off to be seen to by an emotionless 2-1B and a young, fresh-faced medic named Harter, who examines her and tells her that apart from some superficial burns, a strained shoulder, and a sprained ankle, she’s in great shape. They can’t waste their precious supply of bacta on her, she’ll just need to heal the slow way. 

That’s fine with her. She’s had much worse injuries in her twenty-two years. Given pain medications and assigned a cot, Jyn collapses onto it gratefully. Harter has promised to let her know when she can see Captain Andor and the others. Armed with that knowledge, and too tired to do any worrying, Jyn lets the pain medication carry her into a dreamless sleep.

——-

She’s awoken much too soon by raised voices. Her every muscle aches, despite the medication, and when she sits up, the room sways. The shouting sounds like Cassian, though the words aren’t Basic.

Jyn shoves to her feet and stumbles towards the commotion, putting weight on an ankle that really shouldn’t be supporting her right now. One of the medical staff sees her and tries to stop her, until they hear Cassian cry, “Where is Jyn?”

“That’s me,” she says. “He needs me.”

Instead of arguing, the Cathar male helps her to the room where Cassian lies. He’s out of surgery, out of bacta, but half-delirious. Jyn pushes away from the medic and limps to his side, grasping his hand.

“I’m here, Cassian. I’m here.”

The panic bleeds from his warm brown eyes and he sags against the pillow. “Jyn.”

Harter appears then, brown hair pulled back in a messy tail at the nape of her neck. “I was checking on the others. Captain Andor, you should be resting. And Ms Erso, so should you.”

Jyn hears herself saying, “I can rest here.”

The young doctor looks at Jyn’s hand clasped in Cassian’s, and a knowing expression crosses her features for a moment. “I can see about arranging that.”

Not long after, Cassian has been moved to a bed intended for a larger being. Jyn ignores the looks of the staff when she crawls in to join him, curling around him on the side not attached to wires and tubes. He’s not in danger of dying, but he’s in pain and she doesn’t want to cause him any more of it.

“We’re on our way back to Base One,” Harter informs them. “But we’re keeping you here. Your ribs aren’t fully healed yet. We can’t use up that much of our bacta supply.”

Cassian only grunts in reply. He asks, “How are the others? My team?”

“Corporal Tonc is well. He lost his hand, but we’ve supplied him with a prosthetic. The pilot, Bodhi Rook, suffered partial-depth third-degree burns over thirty percent of his body but seems to be responding well to bacta. Baze Malbus has several blaster wounds and had a minor concussion. It’s Chirrut Îmwe that we’re concerned about. He had severe internal damage, likely from a concussive blast. He’s still submerged in bacta. We’re cautiously optimistic about his recovery.”

“Is…” Cassian stops. “Is that everyone?”

Harter just looks at them both sadly. “Unless there was another ship that hasn’t made it to us yet, I’m afraid so.”

She leaves them to attend to other things. Jyn grasps Cassian’s hand, skin to skin because her synthskin gloves had been taken away.

“We did it,” she says. “We got the plans. We made it out.”

“We did.” He squeezes her hand, and the silence is suddenly a little awkward. “Jyn… About the lift…”

She blushes. “Let’s talk later-” Jyn doesn’t have to fake the jaw-cracking yawn that cuts off her response. “Sleep now.”

He chuckles and pulls her in with his good arm. “Okay. Sleep now.”

It occurs to her as she drifts off that this is the safest she’s felt since Lah’mu. She could, as her last conscious thought before the exhaustion takes her, get used to this.

——-

When General Draven arrives to check on his best agent, he finds the two of them curled up together, both sound asleep.

Somehow he isn’t surprised.

Harter moves to stand beside him. “You wake my patients, Uncle Davits, and I’ll kill you.”

He snorts.

“Is it true? We have the plans?”

“There was a delay, but yes.”

“Good. They’ve both been worried.”

“It’s coming,” he says. “But they don’t need to know that right now. Let them sleep. They’ve earned it.”

 


End file.
